Auld Lang Syne. Second Series, "My Indian Friends." By the
Right Hon. Professor F. Max Muller. (Longmans and Co. 10s. 8d.)—This work is not so interesting as the first series of Auld Lang Syne. It is far less personal and anecdotal, and tends always to discussion of those Indian problems which may be said to have become the life work of Professor Max Muller. The author tells us that from his boyhood India fascinated him. As he was dreaming and seeing visions of Benares at school instead of doing his copy, he was taken by the ear by his writing-master, and told to copy several pages containing such names as Benares, India, Ganges, &c., because he had made so bad a copy, and thus he painfully began an acquaintance with India which was to ripen and expand in after life. In 1841 he began Sanskrit under Professor Brockhaus at Leipzig, then went to Berlin to study under Bopp, and afterwards to Paris, whither he was attracted by the fame of Burnouf. It would evidently have been impossible to have better training for a career devoted to Indian philology and literature. Not content with knowing Sanskrit, Professor Max Miller desired to see India, but that dream has never been realised. He could not have been satisfied with the globe-trotter's visit, for his India "was not on the surface, but lay many centuries beneath it," and for a visit to that India he had no time nor opportunity. It may be said that hardly any one who has never visited India has so complete a sympathy with the deeper elements of the Indian character as Professor Max Mailer. His chief desire is to make Europe understand the people of India. "That brown skin may at first cause a feeling of strangeness, but I know how easily that feeling can be, and has been, overcome, and, judging from my own limited experi- ence, I can truly say that there is behind that warm and almost Italian colour of the Aryas of India, the same warm heart, the same trust, and the same love as under the white skin of Europeans. Real friendship between the rulers and the ruled in India ought to be no impossibility ; it has existed again and again ; only it should no longer be the exception, but the rule." The five chapters of this volume treat of the author's Indian friends (especially of Keshub Chunder Sen, whom he defends from adverse criticism), of the national character of the Hindoos, of Indian theosophy, of the hymns of the Veda, and of an Indian Prime Minister and a child-wife. The personal element is, however, always shading off into discussions of the problems raised by the religious writings of India, as to which it is interesting to learn that Indian thought is generally dis- tinguished from pantheism. "They never say, like other pantheists, that everything in this phenomenal world is God, but that everything has its being in God." Professor Max Muller introduced Keshub Chunder Sen to Dr. Pusey, and it is interesting to learn that they discovered a real religious bond. The Hindoo reformer said : "My thoughts are never away from God, my life is a constant prayer, and there are but few moments in the day when I am not praying to God." This softened the heart of Pusey, "and they parted as friends, both deeply moved."
Previous page
